How to Stay Motivated While Working Remotely

By Marisa Gregory, Account Supervisor 

Over the summer I worked as a PR Intern for Pangissimo, a tech startup company founded by recent Boston University graduates. My job consisted of updating the company’s social media, staging photoshoots and reaching out to influencers. Over the summer the team and I were spread out all throughout the world, one member was in China, a few in Boston, and myself in Connecticut. Aside from a few team meetings in Boston, the majority of my work was remote. 

As Coronavirus continues to disrupt the day to day life of our nation, many companies have mandated employees to work from home. Considering the majority of people are working remotely, I wanted to share some of the tips I learned regarding the best ways to stay motivated while working from home.

• Create a Calendar  
  • Make a long and short term plan. The best way to stay motivated is to plan ahead. As an intern, my main job was to provide weekly updates to my company’s social media accounts. Creating a weekly and monthly calendar is a helpful way to plan out your work and establish a routine. By establishing deadlines for myself I was able to remain on top of my work and provide my team with a record of what I had accomplished.

•  Designate a place to work 
  • The hardest part of working from home is the distractions. It is important to establish a place where you can have some privacy. While the idea of rolling out of bed and doing work in your bedroom is very tempting, the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard warns bringing work into the bedroom will weaken the mental association between your bedroom and sleep. To avoid disrupting my sleep pattern, I turned the living room next to our kitchen into my own personal office. This room served as a consistent, distraction-free spot, and helped me keep my work and personal life separate. What will your spot be?

• Overcommunicate with your team 
  • Communication is a vital component of completing work that is done remotely. Scheduling weekly meetings with my team allowed each member to share their progress and motivated them to meet their deadlines. Meeting with your team a few times of week also keeps the work exciting. The best teams are those that are able to collaborate with each other and feed off each other’s ideas. Weekly meetings allow for new ideas to come to light, and for employees to receive praise for their hard work. Overcommunication with teams is the best way to maintain an efficient work pace and keep teams connected during difficult times.

• Set goals 
  • Working remotely requires a lot of self-discipline. It is easy to procrastinate work or miss deadlines when the consequences are not face-to-face. In order to stay motivated it is important to set goals. As PRLab supervisor, Anaya Shah points out in her blog post on effective goal setting, goals should be realistic, specific, and measurable. As all classes have transitioned to an online platform,  I set weekly, daily, and monthly goals for my work and personal life. Remember, after achieving goals it is important to evaluate them, so you can repeat the process for future use. 

• Trust yourself
  • It is important to remind yourself that you are an expert in your field. While working at home there are a lot of instances where you will not get the chance to bounce your ideas off people or have someone holding your hand when you publish content or send out emails. Do not wait to get assigned tasks, if you have a creative idea for a story or a pitch, start working on and present it for approval after you have finished.  It is important to take pride in your work and trust your skills. Use this as an opportunity to strengthen your expertise and show your supervisors how self-sufficient you are.